Everybody loves rankings. We love comparative information that stacks up organizations or governments relative to others. But are human rights numbers accurate? Can we actually count things like “victims of torture”?
The simple answer is no. The number of violations of rights is fundamentally unobservable. We will never know, for example, how many times during a year the US government violated the Convention against Torture. Recent discussions of this issue include the number of police killings in the United States, the number of people killed in the Syrian civil war, and the amount of sexual violence in conflicts.
For decades now, political scientists, sociologists, economists and other researchers have been creating and studying datasets to better understand what makes governments increase their respect for human rights. Do international treaties make a difference? Are international tribunals helpful? Do written constitutions or democratic elections improve respect for rights?
